


Fraught with Complication

by RobinWritesChirps



Category: The Trail to Oregon! - Team Starkid, Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier - Holmes/McMahon/Lang & Lang & Gale
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coming Out, F/F, F/M, Family Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Heteronormativity, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23842342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinWritesChirps/pseuds/RobinWritesChirps
Summary: Jasmine’s teenage years are littered with wrong choices of boys and Ja’far is convinced there is not a single one who deserves her. Five times she fell for the wrong guy, one time she fell for the right girl.Ja’far/Sherrezade trying to parent their bratty little princess the best they can as she discovers the world of dating, and herself.
Relationships: Ja'far & Princess (Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier), Ja'far/Sherrezade (Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier), Mouthface Dikrats/Princess (Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier), Princess & Sherrezade (Twisted: The Untold Story of the Royal Vizier)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 27





	1. The one who was too old

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve started writing this MONTHS ago but I was initially going to post it as a longer one-shot. I’ve decided instead to split the story into much easier to read short chapters.

The cellphone buzzed twice unnoticed.

The music covered it anyways, something cheesy and light-hearted Sherrezade had put on to make the daunting weekend of renovations a breeze and pleasure. Ja'far was painting over the old teal and purple castle landscapes covering the walls of their daughter's bedroom, Sherrezade assembling the new furniture more suited to the ever more demanding needs of their now high schooler, and if as much time was spent on silly duets of old songs they loved as on actually creating the room their adorable teenage brat of a daughter wanted, then Jasmine would just have to be grumpy about it. For the present, she was entirely out of sight, of course, fleeing the house as soon as they had suggested that it might in fact be nice of her to help them remodel this room of hers. Her escape had been so fast that her phone now laid forgotten on her old desk and so, for once in her life, she wasn't there to instantly check the notifications. It took a third time buzzing for her dear old parents to notice.

"What's that?" Ja'far asked.

Sherrezade cut short the little melody she had been in the middle of and smiled at him.

"Mmh?"

He put down the paint brush safely into the tray and crossed the room towards her side of it. Putting an arm round her waist, he pointed to the lit up screen.

"Oh." Sherrezade's smile turned to a well meant smirk. "Who would have thought she could live and breathe without it?"

Ja'far took a step closer.

"She's got a new message."

But Sherrezade held him back by the arm. Hugging it to her, she pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

"Don't look, dear."

Ja'far was fussing.

"I'm not looking!" He retorted, feigning indifference. "It's nothing to me if she... gets a message from..." He took a miniature step closer to the old child-sized desk. "Aladdin?!"

His head snapped to Sherrezade. He was getting pink in the face.

"Do you know an Aladdin?"

Sherrezade took his hand in hers, entwined their fingers to bring them to her lips and soothe him.

"No," she admitted. "But evidently, Jasmine does."

"Mmh," Ja'far hummed, frowning.

Sherrezade kissed his cheek before promptly pushing him away from the desk by a firm shove on the butt. He yelped faintly but took the order nonetheless.

"She's a growing girl," she said. "Let her have her secrets and her friends and her life. Don't think of it, love."

Ja'far huffed and picked up his paint roll from the tray. He did not sing along with her for at least three songs but eventually soothed himself back into it and the room was finished long before Jasmine deigned to make her precious appearance again.

Nothing more was said about Aladdin that day but Sherrezade should have known better than to expect Ja'far to be calm and collected about it. She had near forgotten about it when the next day, Ja'far brought it up again before the kids woke up. He was making their breakfast plates for them, flat bread with cream and honey, ever full of attentions and care. His hand holding the knife started to gesticulate angrily enough for Sherrezade to switch to the other side of the kitchen to brew their tea unassaulted.

"I looked up this Laddin on Jasmine's friends page," he whispered loudly, angrily.

Sherrezade sighed with fondness.

"I thought you'd agreed to drop it."

Ja'far was animated, ever passionate even when he was frustrated. She loved him so dearly for it, even when they disagreed. Especially when they did, because such occasions were so rare that she couldn't help being fascinated by this facet of him. She turned around to look at him better and smiled.

"I would have," he said, a bold lie, "But wait until you hear this."

"We said we wouldn't do anything."

Angrily, he grabbed a piece of bread to spread some cream across it and angrily, he closed it and put it down on one of the six plates tidily lined up on the counter. He had always made breakfast for the girls and for the two of them and Sherrezade had always gladly let him do so. Ja’far’s good heart made him crave to be of service to the ones he loved. She supposed his concern was part of this as well.

"Oh, _I'm_ not going to do anything about it…" She quirked an eyebrow at him. "THE POLICE IS! SHERREZADE, THIS GUY IS THIRTY-TWO YEARS OLD! What is he doing talking to our princess?!"

He handed her his phone where he had pulled up Aladdin's profile. A thread of pictures of him flexing his arms, another of what seemed to be the results of shoplifting hauls, a smug grin across his face, way too many topless pictures for someone with nipples that hairy… She thought of her very fifteen-year-old daughter and gave Ja'far back the phone.

She begged Ja'far to let her talk to Jasmine. He was reluctant and spent all breakfast grinding his teeth angrily, but there was near nothing she could ask of him that he wouldn't give freely and so that night, it was Sherrezade who quietly knocked on the newly painted door of Jasmine's bedroom and waited for an answer.

It never came. Of course. She knocked a second time and heard a groan through the door. A third and finally, the princess was graceful enough to raise her voice.

"Badroul, I _told_ you you can't have the Switch till Thursday, it's my turn and…"

"It's me," Sherrezade interrupted, though she would have to have a look at the rotation schedule of the girls' games to make sure Jasmine wasn't extending her privileges of being the elder far beyond fairness.

"Oh." A sigh. "What's up?"

"I'd like us to have a little talk," she replied, trying to sound kind. "Face to face."

A few seconds passed before the answer.

"Sure, come in."

As a rule, Ja'far and Sherrezade never entered their daughters' rooms without permission and, pushing the door open, she was reminded of how necessary that arrangement was for her own well-being as well as the children's. Blinking, trying to look away from the piles of mess across all possible surfaces of the room, she wondered when she had gotten so old that she worried about rooms being tidy. A conversation for another day. Jasmine, who had been looking at her phone screen with a smile, comfortably tucked in a corner of her large bed, put it aside and for that, Sherrezade could only be grateful. Often as not, conversations with her girls were without eye contact on their part.

"So…" The route to take had been so clear in her mind before knocking, yet now confronted with the very real situation of having to ask her daughter if she was being sexually groomed, Sherrezade found herself just as helpless as one might be. A sudden surge of love for Jasmine overtook her and she took a big breath and smiled. "So, have you been talking to a lot of boys lately?"

Jasmine's head snapped to her and Sherrezade saw from the first glance they shared that her father's intuition had most likely not been for naught. Her heart sank in her chest and her breath hitched with the emotion, but she forced the smile in place nonetheless and cocked her head with curiosity as she waited for whatever Jasmine would say, lie or not.

"Why?"

Sherrezade, now anxious, tapped her lap nervously as she sat on Jasmine's bed next to her. Gently, her arm extended between them and Jasmine stared at it angrily. Ja'far's golden rule, she remembered. _I get back what I give_. A truth for a truth.

"We saw a notification on your phone," she said honestly, quietly. "I told your father not to open it and we _didn't_ , but he read the name on the screen and went on a little investigation." _Without telling me_ , she might have added, but it served nothing to let the children know of any discord between their parents for no reason. "Princess, what's going on with Aladdin?"

Jasmine seemed suddenly relieved. Chipper and excited, she explained.

"Oh, well, he's just this great guy I met a while ago. He's actually super funny and he's had this horrible rough childhood and was telling me about it the other day and…"

She stopped right in her tracks, probably realizing that boy talk was something that her mother was no longer privy to, fifteen years old now, a high schooler, a big girl in most ways.

"Have you two had sex?"

Jasmine was horrified, which made Sherrezade both very relieved, and a little bit disappointed in herself for the strength of that relief beyond the present Aladdin situation. But this wasn't just any of the boys her age, and relief was well warranted now.

"No!" Jasmine replied at once with the blunt honesty they knew in her that couldn't be faked. "Why would you say that?!"

Sherrezade scooted closer to take her daughter's hand in hers. The touch was accepted, if not reciprocated.

"I can't think of any reason why a thirty-two year old man would suddenly become the friend of my fifteen year old _child_ with no ulterior motive. Can you?"

Perhaps she was being too stubborn herself, stressing the word in a way that would only make Jasmine more reluctant − she hated being reminded that she wasn't, in fact, the fully developed independent super woman she thought she was and Sherrezade and Ja'far tried to, as much as they could, let her believe in herself rather than bring her down to their dull realism that came with a few decades' worth of lived experiences. In this instant, she had all the petulance of the sassy, naive, foolishly brave little girl she had been her whole life. Sherrezade adored her and feared for her in equal parts for it.

"It's not like that," she retorted vehemently. "I was just being bothered by some seniors at the park and he told them to eff off and then saw I was playing on my Switch and asked me if I liked video games, and if I wanted to go back to his place to check his collection of… Oh."

Her face turned in disgust as the realization hit her.

"Oh, he _is_ a sexual predator!"

Sherrezade nodded. The good thing about raising a teenager was occasionally reaping the results of many, many discussions that had not seemed to leave any imprint at the time. Years later now, they saw one by one every seed planted finally come to blossom and their daughter wasn't nearly as clueless as she sometimes pretended to be to annoy them.

"I _don't_ want to have sex with him."

There was a sphere of ever growing privacy around their daughter, but Sherrezade was glad whenever she was invited in it, even just briefly.

"So will you stop talking to him?"

Jasmine bit her lip hesitantly.

"But he's really funny and cool…"

"There's plenty of funny and cool boys your age," Sherrezade said pointedly.

Having been in contact with her daughter's friends, she could attest that this was a lie, but some lies were better than a horrendous truth. How blessed they were to have had only girls. Jasmine was undecided for a long while, clutching her phone, but eventually she shrugged and opened up whatever app it was that the kids used these days.

"Oh, alright," she said, half exasperated already. A few more apps were browsed and she shut the phone again. "There, he's blocked from everything."

Sherrezade leaned over to kiss her at the temple.

"So," she said. "Was that very hard?"

"No," Jasmine replied with a pout. "I just… Mommy, are men always donkey shit not worth looking at like daddy says?"

Sherrezade smiled. That was a big question, but she supposed it had been a big conversation throughout.

"Not always," she said. "But not seldom either. Give it time, princess, you'll find someone who was worth the wait."

Jasmine waited all of three weeks before the next one.


	2. The one who was just a dick overall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jasmine’s attempt at dating doesn’t impress her father one bit.

They had one car − Sherrezade had never been interested in driving and worked from home anyways. They split the chores accordingly. Ja’far did most of the groceries and cooking, she did most of the cleaning and yard tending. The girls did the rest − on a good day. The household ran smoothly with or without their help and Sherrezade didn’t wish it any other way. She especially did not wish to switch roles with her dear husband.

He dropped the children at their various schools in the morning, to the great embarrassment of Jasmine who hated for her father not only to be a teacher at her high school, but a very popular one among the students, too. They came home together in the evening as well, except on such rare occasions where Ja'far was kept at school for too long for the impatient taste of their princess of a daughter. On such nights, they often either got the younger girls on the school bus, or scheduled play dates for them to pass the few hours extra (which became study groups as they grew older, soon teenagers too) and Sherrezade picked up Jasmine on her old little moped. It only had room for one child, small as she was, and was a source of immense pride for Sherrezade, who felt young and fun and adventurous as ever whenever she rode it, and of faked exasperation for her daughter, who pretended to find her parents much older and lamer than she actually did.

Sherrezade arrived early. It was the day of a PTA meeting and she had planned on surprising Ja'far with a visit so that he would receive her love and support for the upcoming evening − Ja'far enjoyed these meetings, but they were also a source of tension and stress and those were the last things Sherrezade ever wanted him to feel. She had intended to give him some company, then to find and pick up their daughter as she left him to his fate. When she neared the gates of the school, she realized quite immediately that Jasmine was already there but that she had found some company of her own.

"Oh shit, it's your mom!"

The boy pulled his tongue out of Jasmine's throat, his hands off her body, and scrambled off of her entirely as Sherrezade parked herself next to the panting pair.

"Hello, Mrs… erm… shit, what's your last name again, bae?"

Sherrezade's instincts were telling her to grab her daughter, to carry her over her shoulder and drag her home just like this to lock her in her room for the upcoming six to seven years. Her experience, however, told her to smile. At least he looked about her age.

"I don't think we've met before," she said kindly. "Jasmine, you haven't introduced us."

Jasmine gave her a glare that might as well have ended a thousand and one lifetimes if looks could kill.

"Mommy, Flynn. Flynn, my mom," she said in a monotone dull voice that almost hid well her annoyance right under the surface.

Sherrezade offered her hand for the boy to shake. He tried to give her a confident smile and she tried to push down the urge to pinch him and ask him to never see her baby daughter again. Jasmine was fifteen, she repeated in her own mind. Dating at fifteen was normal and healthy. That didn't mean she had to enjoy seeing her daughter making out, but she could at least not try and hinder it or shame her for it.

"I'll be right back," she told them. "I wanted to see Ja'far."

"Don't tell him!" Jasmine begged instantly, clutching Sherrezade's arm. "Please don't tell him."

Sherrezade suddenly remembered the blessed times when their children were very little, or even earlier during her pregnancies, and how Ja'far and herself had often concerted together over the way they intended to raise them. One of their conclusions had been that it would be better to always keep a secret confided in them unless it was more dangerous to keep it than to share it. Looking at the smug boy with an arm itching to grab her daughter by the waist again, Sherrezade saw many things, but saw no danger.

"Of course," she promised. "Cross my heart."

Not talking about what she had seen to Ja'far was hard enough, but feasible. His mind was elsewhere anyways. He started going through the notes of what he intended to tell parents at the meeting, asking for her opinion, and Sherrezade gave him advice and a kiss and a quick back rub and left without having uttered even a hint of the secret. Not talking about it with Jasmine was a very different story, one that unfolded so naturally Sherrezade didn't even have to fight against it. During the drive home, they exchanged not a word. As soon as they got home, Jasmine climbed the stairs three at a times and disappeared in her room for the rest of the evening.

She never told Ja'far she had seen Jasmine with the boy. That, she had promised. She had said nothing about asking Ja'far some questions, though. Much less about what her husband himself volunteered.

"How was the night, then, love?"

Ja’far was warm and tired when he walked through the door and Sherrezade was a flutter around him, grabbing his things to put them away for him. He crashed into a couch and she gave him a neck massage from behind, kissed the top of his curly head. Ja’far looked up and smiled exhaustedly.

"Nightmarish?" She huffed and rubbed his neck and shoulders a little deeper. "No, it was… productive. I think. A few of the students were troublemakers as always, but I’m doing all I can, aren’t I?"

"Yes, you are," she said, because it was the kind thing to say and because she believed it.

She thought of her daughter locked up in her room and likely not coming back down till the morning, though it was very close to her bedtime by now anyways. Ja’far would go and say goodnight and might well be ignored, but he still always made the point to connect even without always reciprocation.

"That Eugene Fitzherbert," he grumbled. "Always him, huh? He has his little gang of friends and I think, no, I _know_ he’s the one behind all these pranks but I’ve never been able to prove it."

"Oh, that rascal again," she said, having heard of that Eugene for a hundred times since Ja’far had started teaching him two years prior. "One day he’s bound to betray himself."

Ja’far was melting into her touch one palmful at a time, barely anything left of her stiff plank of a husband when he had passed the door. He closed his eyes to better enjoy the gift.

"He’s got that foolish nickname he keeps signing the crime scenes with," he went on. "I’m sure I’ve heard other students call him so, but the principal just refuses to believe me when I tell him Eugene and Flynn are the same person."

She was grateful to not be facing him, for Ja’far knew her reactions like no other and would never have missed her shock. Why did Jasmine now have to find herself the worst type of boys? It was an odd thing to witness. As a child, the girl had never much longed for her male peers, declaring them stupid and gross from a very young age and focusing on better things − in large part a plan to conquer the world and make everyone in it be nicer to each other. A remnant of what Ja’far so tried to instill in her, Sherrezade supposed. Even in middle school, she had barely given boys two thoughts, despite all her friends chattering to one another about who they were crushing on. It had only been in high school that Jasmine had determined that she was old enough to date and, always willful and bold and a half, to date sneakily and out of her parents’ sight.

"Well," she said. "Hopefully that Flynn gets his comeuppance."

Ja’far leaned his head against the back of the sofa and Sherrezade gave him a quick upside down kiss which made him smile. Tiredness was crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"Thank you, my darling," he said softly. "I don’t think I can stand another round of cleaning gallons of mayonnaise out of my desk drawers…"

Lying in his arms that night in bed, Sherrezade cuddled comfortably as the touch of Ja’far’s fingers through her hair slowed down and stopped entirely when he fell asleep. Often, it felt like she remembered nothing before meeting him, like her existence had only really mattered to bring her to the moment it had become entwined to his. Tonight, she thought back on it, though, that eternity ago before that first magical date all of sixteen years past. She had had boyfriends in high school. Nothing that lasted too long and none that infatuated her even a fraction of how she had felt for Ja’far the moment she had caught his flushed face staring at her from across the coffee shop. Still, back when she had lived them, those crushes and little relationships had not meant nothing. They had been a joy, a thrill. Surely, Jasmine deserved those throbbings of the heart before she found her special one. Sherrezade prayed that she found him some day.

Of course, Jasmine would fall for a scoundrel, she thought with fondness for her elder daughter. Always the one with the biggest heart you could ever meet, she had it in her to rescue the underdogs and try to raise them up to being the best of the best. As a child, she had begged to take in a lot more strays than their home had been able to accommodate and Sherrezade was certain that the tears she had shed when they had had to give away her new pet friends had been real. Just like she was certain that whatever fleeting crush she had on Flynn must be truly felt. In this matter, mother and daughter differed, she supposed. Sherrezade had never had a desire to teach the worst of boys out of their ill manners. She had found the best of men and strove every day to make him even better. Polishing gold worked better than trying to glam up a turd.

Furious and puffy red with frustration, he was a little less than the wise husband she so loved and admired and Sherrezade bit back a smile. Finding him cute in his anger was a guilty pleasure of hers, but not one to share with her poor upset Ja’far.

" _Eugene Fitzherbert!_ " He hissed. He was keeping his voice down for the sake of the children outside the door of the office where he had shut himself in with Sherrezade that evening, a few days after the meeting. "Can you believe this?!"

Sherrezade tried to beckon him to the couch with her, to soothe him with an embrace, but Ja’far kept pacing around the small room. One of the cats was peeking warily through the curtains at the strange parade of his master and Sherrezade rubbed her fingers together just above the floor to call him close. Lion jumped on the couch next to her and she scratched his little head as she listened to Ja’far.

"She didn’t even have the nerve to tell me herself! I had to catch them… kissing… behind the cafeteria where _that_ crowd hangs out! If you can even call that kissing."

"Oh, she’s a fierce one," Sherrezade said and Ja’far nodded before ranting on and on. The cat had fallen asleep on her lap for a good hour by the time he was done, and in the mean time he had rethought every possible part of his daughter’s future if she kept such company any longer.

It was only locked up in here just the two of them that he spoke the truth of his heart. He hid his game better at dinner, though Jasmine and him never exchanged a glance the whole evening and even Marjanah, who never noticed much of other people’s emotions, said outright just how weird they were both being. Ja’far muttered some words to assuage their younger child, though Sherrezade could see plainly on his face that he was still very upset.

The embarrassment on either part was short-lived. Not another week had passed that their daughter came home with a broken little heart. Ja’far, who had hated the boy, had still tried to comfort her the whole ride home but she had barely passed the door that she ran upstairs and locked herself into her room for the foreseeable future. Ja’far and Sherrezade looked at one another and climbed up the stairs in her trail.

"Princess," Sherrezade said tentatively after a knock went unanswered, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"LEAVE ME ALONE, MOM!" Jasmine retorted and the sound of tears shaking her voice broke Sherrezade’s heart in turn. "I’M DEAD!"

"No, you’re not," Ja’far retorted. "You’re just sad. Sweetie, let’s talk."

It took some time but after a while, Jasmine’s red little face showed in a sliver of the door. Grabbing Ja’far by the arm, she pulled him inside and shut the door to Sherrezade’s face. She frowned, but the sound of voices inside and Ja’far kindly trying to comfort her as she cried her sorrows out was enough relief to leave them to it.

In the privacy of their own room, Ja’far did a thousand victory dances to celebrate the breakup. It was nothing that Jasmine needed to see. They could only hope that the next lad she set her heart upon would be a tad less delinquent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment!!! Please!


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